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100 Days – Week of Color – Featured Quilt 1

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue indigo, violet is a popular color scheme. When you can’t choose one or two, use them all in rainbow order.

Up first as the featured quilt is Kati Spencer’s stunning Pixelated Colorwheel. Take a few minutes to take in this quilt.

Pixelated Colorwheel by Kati Spencer

Katie shared that she wasn’t seeking perfect transition of one color to the next. She simply wanted to create the overall impression of a colorwheel. The squares in this quilt are 1 ½” finished. There are 841 squares in the quilt. Katie used six Kona solids charm packs, 1 of each colorway except 2 of the bright palette, though not all of those colors found their way into the quilt. There are four squares of white near the center of the quilt where the design begins. She started her quilting at this point as well.

Kati’s thoughts on color:

“Working with color is an ongoing experiment for me. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t. Frequently, I’ll pull stacks of fabric for a quilt and let them sit on the shelf for days or weeks just looking at them occasionally. I often find that I’ll remove several fabrics out of the stack because the color isn’t quite right. Sometimes it takes me quite a while to realize which ones just won’t work. I’ve also come to realize that the color combinations don’t have to be perfect, but rather interesting. In this quilt, the color arrangement isn’t perfect, with each color blending seamlessly to the next. I designed it this way to add interest. This quilt remained on my design wall for weeks before I actually started sewing. I would walk into the room, glance at it, and notice one or two squares that needed changed. It was an ongoing design process for quite awhile to get the colors just as I wanted them.”

More about Kati:

Kati tells us, “Modern quilting means so many different things to me. Solids almost always say modern to me. I also think modern quilting frequently has an interesting yet relatively simple overall design.” Kati is a member of the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild and blogs at From the Blue Chair. She loves her guild and tells us it’s a great place to learn! Kati’s favorite part of quilting is “seeking out great inspiration and then turning that great inspiration into unique quilts.” She’s definitely inspired us! You can see more of Katie’s work in her Flickr photostream.

This is really tremendously great! I like the idea of leaving fabric out for a while, or leaving blocks on the wall for a while, and letting them settle before you start sewing them together. I need to do that more often. :)